Let’s state calmly and sanely that space militarization is
happening. It is a little questioned and less touted reality of the military
and aerospace industry. It enables our modern way of life. Let us also state
that this is not the result of a sinister plan. Space militarization is
plodding along with small, incremental steps, lacking fanfare and, crucially, a
sweeping vision (which would require a political debate and legal framework).
As of yet, there are no villains akin to Dr. Strangelove in the story of space
militarization. Though when the Commander of the United States Air Force Space
Command says
Space superiority is our day-to-day mission. Space supremacy is our
vision for the future. Space superiority is not our birthright, but it is our destiny.
as he did in March 2005, and with a name like a Star Wars
villain (General Lance Lord), we may have a contender for villainy.
No, I’m sure General Lord is an all right guy just doing his
job. Like all the other military planners, engineers and strategists writing
memos from their cubicles about how to take the advantage in space.
Below is a primer on space militarization since the Chinese
shot a KEW (kinetic energy weapon) into an aging weather satellite in 2007. My
information is primarily based on studied from RAND and the Hudson Institute. A
rash of these papers come out every few years, as they have for decades. They
help us put this mysterious and scary subject in perspective with the
professionals tasked with carrying it out.
Put simply, space militarization will continue because
“space systems enable our modern way of war” on the ground (William J. Lynn
III, A Military Strategy for the New Space Environment, 2011). The U.S. has
five independent satellite constellations for its “defense connectivity needs.”
And even if that were not the case, space militarization
would be a factor because space systems also enable our modern way of life.
Circling 20,000 km above us every 12 hours are 24 GPS satellites—5 to 12 of
them are above you right now, connecting with your phone. An Iridium
constellation of 66 satellites all in Low Earth Orbit ensure all global
communications. If Russia or China or Iran can take out these satellites and
basically stop us from the dozen or more everyday tasks (some trivial, others
crucial) that average Americans have come to depend on, well, what are we to do
about that?
According to the National Security Space Strategy (2011),
the Defense Department’s “Space Policy Mandate of Operations” has 4 quadrants,
all of which support military readiness:
See
Spy satellites
Missile
warning
Maritime
domain warning
Environmental
status
|
Communicate
Internet and
communication satellites
Militarily
relevant data streams
|
Navigate
GPS
Positioning,
navigation, timing services (PNT)
|
Operate
Precision
strikes
Early warning
Situational
awareness
Synchronization
of operations
Search &
rescue
|
Note that there is nothing in this “Mandate of Operations”
that George Lucas or J.J. Abrams would be remotely interested in putting in a
movie. Space Militarization, for now, has nothing to do with dog fights in
lunar orbit. All space infrastructure is directed toward terrestrial targets
for the simple reason that the primary targets of war are terrestrial—except
for the satellites that now guide all aspects of land, air and sea
missions.
This is how Lynn describes our space infrastructure: “What
are in space are the sensory organs, which find and fix [terrestrial] targets…
and the nervous system, which connects the combatant elements and permits them
to operate cohesively.”
He adds that the U.S. is “inordinately dependent on its
complex but exposed network of command, control, communications” space
networks. The reason they are exposed is because a satellite’s position is
impossible to hide. A high schooler could do the math on the trajectory that
would bring a missile and a satellite into collision.
This is the reason China, Russia, and every other would-be
world power is so interested in developing their space capabilities. Sure India
wants its own rover to beam back pictures from Mars, and China would love its
own Neil Armstrong moment. But twined with that—like it was for our own Neil
Armstrong moment—is this military necessity: taking out U.S. satellite systems
would level the playing field on the terrestrial shooting war, which China et.
al. would never win otherwise. This is the reason that space militarization
will continue—a quieter, gentler arms race.
In one of Mary FitzGerald’s last dispatches—China’s Military
Strategy for Space, 2007—she wrote about the types of weapons the Chinese are
developing. Here is a sample list:
KEWs: ultra high speed warheads that collide with targets
Direct Energy Weapons (DEW): lasers, microwaves and particle
beams
Hypersonic Aerospace Aircraft
Orbital Ballistic Missile: can function as an ICMB,
anti-satellite weapon (ASAT) or orbital bomber
Ground Based Laser
Orbital Transfer Vehicle
Space-Based Radio Frequency Energy Weapon
Space Operations Vehicle: on-demand space lift from ground
to orbit
(Naturally, we are working on the same type of weapons. It
is an arms race after all.)
Now that potential future enemies are playing target
practice with weather satellites, the U.S. is falling back on a deterrence
posture.
According to Lynn, American space deterrence has four
objectives right now:
1) Space
situational awareness: identify and assess all orbital objects so that we can
identify the origin of any attack. (The potential for an attack to happen in
space without our ability to know the source is very real, so is the potential
for a 3rd party to launch an attack that will implicate another
world power who had nothing to do with it. As John M. Collins wrote in his 1989
congressional report: “Space may prove to be a particularly fruitful
environment for deception.”)
2) Enhance
the survivability of space satellites
3) Launch
reserve satellites to replace those damaged or destroyed in an attack – “rapid
response space launch capabilities.”
4) Mindset
shift toward “Small and flexible distributed capabilities” in space and on the
ground so that if one satellite constellation is damaged the entire network
will no collapse.
That is a very hopeful-sounding list. Of course, the obvious
down side to space war, like all wars (but more so, I’d argue) is that things
can spiral out of control very fast. The cascade failure depicted in Gravity is a realistic possibility. But
there are other possibilities for catastrophe that may not be deterred or even
predicted.
In his Rice University
speech on space policy, September 12, 1962, President John F. Kennedy said
this:
There is no strife, no prejudice, no national conflict in
outer space as yet. Its hazards are hostile to us all. Its conquest deserves
the best of all mankind, and its opportunity for peaceful cooperation may never
come again.
Nearly 55 years later, it feels like that opportunity has
come and gone.
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